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Edinburgh in Scottish Gaelic, is the second-largest city in Scotland and its capital city. It is situated on the east coast of Scotland's central lowlands on the south shore of the Firth of Forth and in the unitary local authority of City of Edinburgh. It has been the capital of Scotland since 1437 and is the seat of the country's devolved government. The city was one of the major centres of the enlightenment, led by the University of Edinburgh. The Old Town and New Town districts of Edinburgh were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. In the census of 2001, Edinburgh had a total resident population of 448,624. Edinburgh is well known for the annual Edinburgh Festival, the largest performing arts festival in the world, and for the Hogmanay street party. At the time of the art festivals the population of the city doubles. The city is one of the world's major tourist destinations, attracting roughly 13 million visitors a year, and is the second most visited tourist destination in the United Kingdom after London. The origin of the city's name is understood to come from the Brythonic Din Eidyn (Fort of Eidyn) from the time when it was a Gododdin hillfort. In the 1st century the Romans recorded the Votadini as a British tribe in the area, and about 600 the poem Y Gododdin using the Brythonic form of that name describes warriors feasting "in Eidin's great hall". After it was besieged by the Bernician Angles the name changed to Edin-burh, which some have argued derives from the Anglo-Saxon for "Edwin's fort", possibly derived from the 7th century Northumbrian king Edwin. However, since the name apparently predates King Edwin, this is highly unlikely. The burgh element means "fortress" or "group of buildings", i.e. a town or city and is akin to the German burg, Latin parcus, Greek pyrgos etc. This word can be traced back to the Chaldean perach meaning "growth", in the sense that a group of buildings is a growth from the earth, and may be a borrowing. "Din Eidyn" is Brythonic Celtic for "Dun Eidyn" meaning "Eidyn Town", "Eidyn Dune", or "Eidyn Down(s)". A Celtic "Dun" was a hilltop fortress town, and the suffix appears throughout Caesar's "Gallic Wars". The Germanic equivalent is "Burgh"; for example, an "ice-berg" is literally an "ice-mountain". The sense is identical: a hilltop fortified town. Thus, the exact translation of "Din Eidyn" into the Germanic tongue of the Angles is "Eidyn Burgh", or more simply, "Edinburgh". As with the borrowing of "Brynaich" as "Bernicia", we see that the Angles adopted the honorific pronoun "Eidyn", translating only the modifier "Din" into their own tongue as "Bergh". The first evidence of the existence of the town as a separate entity from the fort lies in an early 12th century charter, generally thought to date from 1124, by King David I granting land to the Church of the Holy Rood of Edinburgh. This suggests that the town came into official existence between 1018 (when King Malcolm II secured the Lothians from the Northumbrians) and 1124. Edinburgh is clearly labeled on this T and O map from ca. 1300. (North lies roughly in the direction of the upper left corner.)The charter refers to the recipients (in Latin) as "Ecclisie Sancte Crucis Edwinesburgensi". This could mean that those who drafted the charter believed Edwin to be the original source of the name and decided to derive the Latinisation from what they believed to be the ancient name. It could also mean that at some point in the preceding 600 years the name had altered to include a w. If the latter scenario was the case then it was soon to change; by the 1170s King William the Lion was using the name "Edenesburch" in a charter (again in Latin) confirming the 1124 grant of David I. Documents from the 14th century show the name to have settled into its current form; although other spellings ("Edynburgh" and "Edynburghe") appear, these are simply spelling variants of the current name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh